A typical grinding mill installation, as used in the treatment of ores, comprises an electric motor which drives the actual mill itself through a set of gears. In order to minimise starting current drawn by the motor, when the grinding mill is set in operation, a clutch is included in the drive system. The mill with its unbalanced load is very heavy and to maintain precise alignment between the clutch drive and driven shafts would be a difficult, lengthy and costly exercise, because of dynamic movements occurring in operation. Moreover, if the shafts are aligned in cold conditions they tend to be misaligned after a few hours of running because of differential thermal movements. Also, the gear set generates forces which can combine to yield associated bearing forces that have not only different levels, but also different directions. The clutches employed in grinding mill installations are thus of a kind capable of accommodating misalignment but such clutches can readily exhibit unacceptable orbiting.
It is accordingly an object of the invention to provide a method of and a means for coupling a rotary drive to an unbalanced driven member through a clutch accommodating misalignment between the drive and the load such that clutch orbiting is reduced or eliminated.